


The Death of Kelso

by LadyBArtist



Series: One Summer [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Death, Grief/Mourning, Heartache, Heartbreak, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 13:15:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11336277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBArtist/pseuds/LadyBArtist
Summary: Captain Kirk recalls the aftermath of the death of Lee Kelso, Spock's boyfriend.Kelso was murdered by Gary Mitchell in 'Where No Man Has Gone Before", a mission which occurred just two weeks after the event in the Gamma Cygni system as told in our first story 'One Summer'.





	The Death of Kelso

The universe doesn’t think in terms of fair and unfair. In fact, the universe doesn’t think at all. It just does, again and again and again. Someone hits the jackpot; someone gets struck down. Whichever one comes first, the outcome is the just same: something changes. That’s all life is - change from one state to another, birth to death. There’s no rhyme nor reason to it. 

That’s what Spock said to me the day Kelso died. I’m paraphrasing him of course. His actual words were more…logical, naturally. But that’s basically what he said when I called him into my quarters to check how he was taking it – the death of his boyfriend, I mean. I heard him say it and I watched his lips move. I did. But I knew that it wasn’t really Spock saying it at all. Real, actual Spock didn’t believe a word of that. Real, actual Spock was keeping quiet. 

Spock did very well at the funeral. As captain, I read the eulogy. It was easy to talk about the man. I’d only known Kelso for a couple of months but he’d already made a great impression on me. He was one of those people whom everyone knows, instantly. There was nothing hidden about him. I hadn’t even finished my chicken sandwich and he’d already told me all about his mom who worked as an engineer at Starfleet Central and his dad who had been a stay-at-home father, now grandfather. ‘Pop looks after all the grandkids. Makes it so my two sisters can work without worrying.’ 

‘Sounds swell, Lee. Do you want kids some day?’ I’d asked him.

‘Oh yes, sir. We want to have three at least.’

 _We_. I’d ignored it. That _We_. Truth be known, I made damn sure to ignore it. Because, deep-down I knew that meant: ‘ _Spock and I want to have at least three_.’

Before the incident in the Gamma Cygni system, I was too wrapped-up in my own self-pity: ‘Spock isn’t talking to me, boo-hoo-hoo.’ I’d convinced myself that he’d done nothing for fifteen years except think about me. That was my revenge, you see – his eternal torment for rejecting me. But it just wasn’t true of course. There’d been other men, for both of us. Women too…

I ignored it all. Absolutely everything. Kelso spinning Spock’s chair around on the bridge, ‘Is there something you require, Mr. Kelso?’ ‘Yes – a look at you.’ A bowl of soup placed in front of Spock without him asking for it…It was all there, but I didn’t want to know. Because if I knew about it, I’d have to face up to it: there was someone better than me. Someone else was loving Spock now.

But that behaviour was to my detriment. I was the one losing out. I found that out quickly after Spock and I had our moment on Kitara. The ice had finally melted, so I sailed over to join him and Kelso. It was fun being around them. Kelso’s gentle teasing of Spock, Spock pretending like he didn’t even notice. Not that Spock was ever particularly forthcoming, but for those close enough to him, the core of the crew, we all knew how much he loved Kelso and how much Lee loved him. Uhura: ‘I bet he calls you Mr. Kelso even when you’re alone.’ Kelso: ‘Of course!’

I found out that Lee was real good at squash. I challenged him to a couple of matches. He damn-well almost beat me too. I had to work hard to get past him. He didn’t go easy on me. Afterwards, in the changing room, towel wrapped around his neck, nothing wrapped around his waist – I knew what was coming. So I started it off to make it easier. 

‘So, has Spock told you about me?’

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘I just want you to know, Lee, that you have nothing to worry about where I’m concerned.’

He grinned, ‘Oh, I know that, sir.’

He said it real brightly, lightly. He knew that he had nothing to worry about. He knew. And I was left standing there with my dick out, hanging, soft. I was nothing to worry about, nothing whatsoever. Let me tell you, I felt that.

Anyway – I digress. I am always my own favourite subject. This is supposed to be about Spock.

Like I say, he did very well at the funeral. Spock won’t read a eulogy. Such things are alien to him. But he said something to the effect that words were not good enough to express how much everyone would miss Lee’s presence. He was quiet, contained. He made Uhura cry. Janice too. I had her bawling on my shoulder afterwards and I have never been more sorely tempted to fuck her. I wanted to bury myself down inside her, again and again. You think that’s weird? So do I. It doesn’t reflect the best on me, but there it is. You wanted this story, after all. Let’s just put it down to grief making me crazy.

Kelso’s body was to be returned to Kansas, back to his engineer mother and stay-at-home-grandfather pop. Spock spoke to them. I wasn’t in on the call and he never told me about it, but I saw him afterwards and knew that it hadn’t gone well. There’s nothing you can say to Spock at those times. Giving him sympathy is like bouncing a ball off a wall - it just comes back and smacks you in the face: ‘I am a Vulcan, I am incapable…’ You know the mantra. He’s very good at making you feel bad for asking. I think that’s why he does it: to make you feel shitty on his behalf.

It was at the end of our shift straight after that call when Spock said to me, ‘I am required to clear out Mr. Kelso’s quarters.’

I stared at him for a moment, willing him to actually ask me. But he was never going to do that. So I said instead: 

‘Would you like me to help you?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will meet you there at twenty-one-hundred hours.’

At nine on the dot I was outside. So was he. He released the force field across the door. It’s standard procedure to seal the quarters of anyone who dies on a starship. Even when the cause of death happens right in front of your damn face, there’s still a full investigation. Scotty led the Kelso enquiry. I remember him saying, ‘It broke my damn heart in two when I spoke to Spock.’ See – I told you that he’s great at making you feel bad in his place.

We stepped inside. I really wasn’t prepared for what was waiting for me. First, the smell hit me. Spock’s smell. It’s unmistakeable. The man doesn’t need to wear cologne. Ordinarily, it turns me on. But there? It made me feel…angry. Yes, angry. Annoyed. Spock had been there, many times, in a way that I’d never gotten to experience with him. The bed was crumpled from their last time. I could almost make out the damn print of their heads on the pillows.

Like I said, I’m self-absorbed. I made it all about me. I always make it about me.

I turned away from the bed, not wanting Spock to notice that I’d noticed. He was emptying Kelso’s dresser, folding Lee’s tunic away neatly into a transportation box lying at his feet. Just seeing him do that – so neat, so precise – made me want to cry. I seriously thought about running out. I told you - I’m not good with grief. When I lose men on missions, I have my moment of regret and anger and then I get on with it. That’s my job. In the face of overwhelming madness, I have to be the sane one, the dependable one. But as soon as I get back and close my door, I sob like a child.

Do you think less of me now? If you do, I don’t care. You come out here and do this. Try standing with a man you’ve loved for fifteen years to clean out his dead boyfriend’s quarters and show me how to do it, because I’d sure appreciate the pointers, champ. I bet heroes don’t do it like I was – avoiding eye contact and pretending that a tiny, tiny part of me wasn’t thinking about how this might change things between me and Spock. 

I opened a chest. There was a photo album. A real, old-fashioned photo album. I said to Spock, ‘I haven’t seen one of these outside my grandma’s house.’

‘Lee liked polaroid photography. He said that photographs were objects. That they should be held. Cherished…’

Spock held the ‘ _sh_ ’ in cherished just a little longer than was strictly logical. 

‘Do you mind?’ I asked.

‘No, please do,’ Spock said. I sat on the edge of his – of their – bed, and started to flick through. It was a log of his time on the Enterprise. Pretty soon in, there was a picture of Kelso with Spock. ‘Is that mistletoe he’s holding?’

Spock came over, sat beside me. ‘Yes. The Winter Ball. Kelso had just joined. That was the night he asked me out.’

‘You look pissed – for you, I mean.’

‘I was…confused. I told him no.’

I flicked a couple of pages. Just the usual stuff: hanging with friends on the rec deck. But then Spock was back, his arms folded, sitting across from the unseen Kelso and his camera in the very chair I could see to my left. ‘You didn’t tell him no for very long,’ I remarked.

‘He was…persistent,’ said Spock. I could tell he was smiling under that poker face.

We sat together, Spock and I, looking through Lee’s pictures. Most were of Spock. He hates having his picture taken and these were no exception. But Kelso persisted, alright. One sequence really sticks in my mind. Shore leave. Or not. It was a group of photographs which Kelso had taken of the two of them up on the bridge. Spock, as usual, had refused to take his shore leave so Kelso stayed with him. But Uhura, Rand and Chapel, being the teasers they are, kept sending the boys messages of them having a great time on a beach a million miles beneath. So Kelso started having fun back. 

First he took a shot of him in sunglasses. Then a Hawaiian shirt appeared over Kelso’s tunic. Then a cocktail in his hand. A beach ball made an appearance too. And in all of them, Spock was behind him at his science station, trying to ignore what Kelso was up to. 

The final one really got to me: Lee, arm flung around Spock’s neck, giving him a kiss on the cheek, Spock wearing said sunglasses and shirt.

‘We transgressed Starfleet Regulation 12.6 there.’ 

‘What are you expecting me to do? Report you?’ I asked.

He didn’t answer, but I half-thought he wanted me to.

I stood up, put the album in the transport box and returned to the task in hand - clearing out Kelso’s keepsake chest. There was a box with a clasp on it, wooden, black, with gold filigree. It fitted in my hand. I picked it up but dropped it. It fell open, its contents spilling out. It was filled with polaroids. I’ll never forget it. Kelso, Spock. Tied up, tied down - the whole works. You don’t understand what it did to me. No – not the obvious, although that was there too. It was a massive wake-up call. My crush, Spock, doing that? All my memories of him I preserved, you see. I cast his teenage form in amber and worshipped it. My Spock was nineteen years old: shy, unsure and inexperienced. But now he was a grown-up man, a man with a career and space miles under his belt. He was also a man who tied his boyfriend down with a ball gag in his mouth whilst he fucked him, hard. That was – is - Spock.

I was in love with a boy who no longer existed. 

I quickly put the photographs back. I handed it over to him – their sex box. I saw his eyes flash and that made me so hard.

I got back to work. There was another box, very small. I passed it straight over to him. He had to catalogue everything, decide what he would keep, what he’d send back.

I suddenly felt awful. I was having a heart attack. Had to be. My heart felt like it was ripping in two. 

Then I heard it. A terrible noise, worst I’ve ever heard. That’s not a trivial statement - I know what a man being ripped in two sounds like. This was worse than that.

Turns out it was Spock. He was down on the floor, his back against their bed, head dropped, knees drawn up. He was sobbing. Howling.

I got a hold of myself. That bond we share - his grief had hit me. I clambered over to him to help. I needed to take his hand but it was all clawed-up. I forced it open. That small box was in it. I remember feeling resigned to what was in there, but I knew I had to open it still.

It was a ring, of course. A ring and a note - tiny, folded up. It said, ‘First Officer Spock, will you marry me?’

There was a delicate gold chain too. Kelso had known that Spock couldn’t wear anything on his fingers. He had thought of everything.

I seized Spock. I took him into my arms like a bear and held him tighter than I’ve ever held a person before or since. 

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Life isn’t fucking fair.’

**Author's Note:**

>  _"We want to have three at least..."_ Although I haven't seen Spock to ask him (only Jim visited me today), I have a distinct feeling that Spock never said to Kelso, 'Let's have kids.' It just doesn't seem like a Spock thing, does it? Kelso struck me as a bombastic sort. Perhaps he thought he'd persuade Spock eventually. Maybe he would have. Sadly, he never got his chance.
> 
>  _"The Winter Ball"_ Religious observance of all kinds are allowed on the Enterprise. Kirk refers to this as the Christmas party on the televised log which you 20th/21st century types call "Star Trek", but ship-wide events are strictly secular affairs so that everyone can get involved. Most cultures around the galaxy observe the seasons according to their planets, so a winter-themed ball goes down well. However, Santa does usually make an appearance because Scotty has a thing about wearing a beard and getting girls to sit on his knee to ask him for 'something a wee-bit nice.' Which he usually gives them, the saucy-Scot.
> 
>  _"Is that mistletoe...?"_ I have no idea where Kelso got mistletoe from as its not like the NCC-1701 is equipped with the kind of 'Tea, Earl Gray, Hot' replicator of the next century. However, it is to Kelso's credit that he got some. He must have really, REALLY wanted to impress Spock. But of course, Spock had no idea what it was or of the effort he'd gone to. 
> 
> On all things Spock and Christmas, it must be remembered here that Spock's mother - the lovely Amanda - is Jewish.That makes Spock Jewish too. She was born in Boston, by the way. Just so you know.


End file.
